


Last Man Standing

by EzzyDean



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, angst and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EzzyDean/pseuds/EzzyDean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has to be the last one, someone has to be the last to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Man Standing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PurrfectCatastrophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurrfectCatastrophe/gifts).



Of course it had been Makoto.  You lose your anchor and you can never really settle again.  You’re always on edge, waiting for the next storm, the next 3 AM phone call, the next piece of yourself to be lost.  Nagisa knew it wasn’t healthy to wrap so much of yourself up into your friends but it was the only way he knew how to be friends.  All or nothing had always kind of been his thing.  He stands outside, anchorless and lost, and waits for the rest of his friends to join him.  He can still hear his phone ringing in his head, can still feel the sleep clinging to his brain as he rolls over and reads the clock beside his bed.  Two forty-eight in the morning.

He can still hear Haru’s voice, somber and thick, as he wakes Nagisa with the startling news.

Makoto was dead.  Nagisa could hear Haru saying something about a bus hitting a car and people surviving but Makoto was dead and Nagisa can hear someone in the background sobbing and his heart shatters because he just can’t figure out what Haru means.

It’s two fifty-three in the morning, he’s only twenty-six, and one of his best friends is dead.

A hand grabs his shoulder and he doesn’t have to look to know it’s Rei.  He turns and sees Rin right behind Rei.  He sniffles in a deep breath and he’s sure he’ll be okay.  But something in him just cracks at the almost smile Rin tries to give him.  That little tiny attempt to comfort him.  His jaw quivers and then he has his face buried in Rei’s shoulder and he’s letting the first tears leave his eyes since he heard the news.

Haru eventually joins them and they all just stand there and that makes Nagisa sob even harder because it was always Makoto who calmed him down, who eased his tears with those green eyes and that dopey smile and now Nagisa would never get to tell him about that place on the corner with the really good shortcakes he loved and they’d never go to the festival “next year” like they always said they would and it’s just not fair because Mako-chan was just too important to be gone like that.

But he is.  Nagisa can’t count the number of times over the next few months he starts to text Mako about something - a cat he saw, a shirt that reminded him of his friend, a new flavor of popsicle he just had to try - only to hover his finger over the send icon as his phone screen blurs in his vision.  Because Mako won’t answer.  He won’t ask about the kitten with the bright blue eyes and spotty black and gray fur.  He won’t laugh at the silly shirt.  He can’t share a popsicle with Nagisa anymore.

Because now he has no anchor and he is drifting through life, unable to really settle down again.

He moves on, eventually.  They all do.  It’s just how life works.  Mako’s number is in his phone long after he’s sure it’s become someone elses.  He just can’t bring himself to delete it.

 

It’s a hard thing, saying goodbye to your friends, and once Makoto is gone it gets even harder.  There’s always part of you that knows it could be the last time, life is so so short for being the longest thing you’ll ever do, but you never really know it until someone so close to you is gone.  For awhile they cling together.  They see each other every weekend, every holiday they make time together again.  It’s never really the same but it’s close to when they were kids.  That surge of color and zest that they had always had together right at the surface of their lives.  Then life happens.  They miss a weekend here, a holiday there.  People get married, get divorced, have kids, adopt.  Everything shifts and melds and meshes but that hole is still there.  That pothole in the road of his life that his missing anchor.

 

It’s hard to go anywhere when you’re out of steam.  You’re left to the mercy of the wind and the sea.  Rin goes peacefully in his sleep.  It was the only safe time to take him, Nagisa muses as he wipes away tears from his cheeks and watches the sun set, he’d have fought tooth and nail if he had been awake.  Nagisa is thirty-six and he’s just lost another best friend.  Rin was still so young and it’s never going to be fair to have to bury your friends.  Nagisa accepts this as readily as he accepts that another piece of himself will never be whole again.

It’s Haru’s voice again that drops the news on him.  They’re watching the same sunset, he’s sure, though neither of them are really seeing the colors.  He wonders what Haru’s missing now that Rin is gone too.  How much of Haru was tied up in his friends the way Nagisa was.  It’s once again Rei’s shoulder that he finds himself sobbing into and he cries even harder when he wants to look up and see Rin’s stupid little half smile that he only ever made to comfort Nagisa and he knows it won’t be there.  Rin pushed them all, drove them forward, drug them to face their futures head on.

Now everything stands still.  Time drags and he waits for the next phone call.  He still lives.  Still works and eats and plays games and eventually he laughs again.  It’s hard at first, the sobbing and laughter often merge together and he lies in his bed in a ball and wishes they were all sixteen again and nothing hurt.

 

It’s Nagisa, this time, who makes the call with surprisingly calm fingers scrolling through his ever dwindling phone book to find Haru’s name.  He wonders if this is how Haru felt all those years ago when he had called Nagisa with Mako’s name on his lips.  It’s three twenty-seven in the afternoon, Nagisa is forty-two, and he’s on the phone with his remaining best friend.

He has no wind left in his sails and he sits on a park bench with tears streaming down his cheeks.  Haru sits at his side and they, like they often do these days, sit in silence.  A breeze ruffles the leaves and he just can’t stop crying.   There’s no shoulder to sob into this time so he sniffles and wipes at his cheeks with Haru’s sleeve.  They’ve been left to drift on their own.  No anchor, no steam, no wind.

Haru keeps in touch in his Haru way.  One or two word replies to most of Nagisa’s texts and emails.  Occasionally he’ll send a longer one or send one first.  It doesn’t bother Nagisa.  He and Haru, while close enough, had always been this way.  Haru is just there and Nagisa takes comfort in that knowledge.  He takes comfort where he can.  There are still days when he wakes up with a start, sure his phone is ringing, only to fall into an uneasy sleep when he sees no missed calls or new messages.

He takes the comfort of Haru’s presence while he can.  Because all too soon Nagisa is simply an empty shell of a once magnificent ship left to fall apart onshore.

He lost his anchor.

His steam.

His wind.

And now his water is gone too.

Nagisa crawls into bed, alone, and sobs into his pillows.  It doesn’t get any easier.

He’s seventy-eight.

“I’ll catch up to you guys someday.  I promise.  Don’t get too far ahead of me, okay?”  It’s two forty-eight in the morning and Nagisa finally drifts off to sleep.

 

 


End file.
